The question felt stupid, empty, forlorn, the moment it left his mouth, too specious, too whimsical, too buried in the rubble and ruin of their childhood, wishing for things that could never be again. He’d asked out of hope, out of valor, out of the pieces of himself not already chained and shackled to broken barbs of severity and immorality; because he craved for Rikyn’s presence, for his blood brother to take up arms at his side, to gather munitions and herald the coming of the next war beside him, to drum and beckon anarchy, sedition, and abhorrence, to drain and deprive the world of their forgotten legacies with serpentine smiles and illustrious grins. They’d been torn apart by too many other things, by the etchings of time, by the whittlings of circumstances, by greed and stupidity, and in the stretches of silence, the General knew he didn’t crave that disastrous wake again. Rikyn should’ve been here, where he’d been born, where he’d been scolded, where he’d come alive, where they’d all become bent and broken and silly, foolish, intrepid, but so brave, gallant and tarnished beneath the shields and swords of the mountain peaks. Perhaps they’d be mere whispers of their former selves, too broken, too misshapen, too clawed and bombarded against to be anything other than shells. Maybe they’d be merciless heathens, rasping their way to the top, to the glory they’d always been promised, tearing off the shackles, the tethers, and the lines binding them to the ground. They could be so much more than the splintered, fractured boys of the Basin – and together, they had a chance. The summits could still have their renewed genesis, another promised beginning that had come at the time of their births, that had been squandered and fractured when too many demons had come to bombard, when lines had been crossed, when circumstances had altered their pace, their minds, their schemes. Change was inevitable; but they were more than just dreamers and fiends, mercurial and fervent – eager, so eager, for the tastes, the glories, the legends the world had waiting for them. “That’ll be enough,” he said with a soft, sad smile, bending his neck, obliging the beacon of home again, inviting him back into the walls that he’d always known. They would rise, step up from their wounded, battered knees, and topple the heavens, one by one by one, until their names were chiseled into the ground, into the skies, into the stars. 

Erebos

i have nothing, but then the have is not as good as the want